Effective Altruism and Everyday Decisions

I broadly agree with this article, but some part of me felt... uncomfortable?... with the topic. So I tried to give voice to that part of me. Very uncertain about this, and it is a bit confusing.

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I think we often build up pictures/stories of ourselves based on our regular habits/ actions. If I exercise every day, I start to think of myself as athletic/ healthy/ strong. If I wipe the counters in the kitchen, it contributes to my sense of responsibility/ care-taking/ cleanliness. If I do X that I believe is wasteful (i.e. common opinion says that X is wasteful and I have not seen any analyses that disprove the common opinion), I think of myself as a more selfish/ wasteful/ immoral person.

It seems easier for people to build up stories around actions that are direct/ concrete/ tangible/ etc. For example, I hear there are GiveWell employees who feel like their work is so removed from outcomes that it is difficult to feel motivated. Even though GiveWell does much more "direct work" than most of us will ever do! I think actions we feel are present/ close/ non-abstract/ non-alienating/ etc. may influence our self-identity significantly.

Negative self-images, if they get too strong, can be debilitating. At the very least, they are not fun. Often, to avoid negative self-image, we develop stories about why it's "OK" to be wasteful, even if we would not want everyone else to be. Stories such as "my time is super valuable."

Stories matter. If you attain a position of power, they influence what actions you take with that power. And stories interact and compound. For example, my feeling guilty about being wasteful can lead to a reinforcement of the belief that my time is valuable. Believing that my time is really valuable can lead to me making more wasteful decisions. Decisions like: "It is totally fine for me to buy all these expensive ergonomic keyboards simultaneously on Amazon and try them out, then throw away whichever ones do not work for me." Or "I will buy this expensive exercise equipment on a whim to test out. Even if I only use it once and end up trashing it a year later, it does not matter."

The thinking in the examples above worries me. People are bad at reasoning about when to make exceptions to rules like "try to behave in non-wasteful ways", especially when the exception is personally beneficial. And I think each exception can weaken your broader narrative about what you value and who you are.

I think I want people to default towards the common-sense, non-wasteful actions (as long as the cost feels pretty low to them), until they have read or made a well-reasoned case that the action is not wasteful in the way common opinion indicates (e.g., I liked Rob's article that complicates our narrative around recycling: https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce). I suspect that this approach will lead to a reinforcement of narratives/ values that seem good to me.

Like most commenters, I broadly agree with the empirical info here. It's sort of obvious, but telling others things like "don't go out of your way to use less plastic" or even just creating unnecessary waste in a social situation can be inconsiderate towards people's sensibilities. Of course, this post advocates no such thing but I want to be sure nobody goes away thinking these things are necessarily OK.

(I was recently reminded of a CEA research article about how considerateness is even more important than most people think, and EAs should be especially careful because their behavior reflects on the whole community.)

I think this view is correct but I would think about how I expressed it.

If someone was sharing advice like this, they care about the future of humanity. Telling them they are making bad choices might put them off. Rather I would want to encourage them and suggest some of the highest impact interventions.

It's easy to come across as superior particularly to people who are trying to make the world better. This would be harmful.

I can sort of relate to this, but its a very complex situation. I remember growing up in an opld house in need of repairs it was often decided 'we would to the work ourselves' rather than hire someone (ie save some money and that helped pay for my college education, some trips to the country, etc). But it would take us 3 days to fix something (eg electrical, plumbing, concrete, roofing) which an expert could do in 1/2 a day.

Also at times very small amounts of savings are a major difference. If you decide to spend more money on some electronic or musical device ( i'm somewhat into music so i often have to decide whether to try to fix what i have or buy something new) you then may not have busfare. So then since you have to walk you will get an 'adventure' --might have to go through some bad weather or dangerous areas.

(I have noticed many good quality modern electrical appliances are both cheap on energy use, and sturdy; but sometimes if you save a little money and get a lower quality one , they break in a short period so you need a new one).

In my spare time for entertainment i try to come up with simple mathematical formalisms ('fermi calculations') to handle these cost/benefit calculations , but i rapidly realize to really handle them you need something like tensor analyses or modern variants (category theory) since you dealing with so many variables.

You might find this book chapter interesting - 'Twenty-Seven Thoughts About Multiple Selves, Sustainable Consumption, and Human Evolution' by Geoffrey Miller.